Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Editing for People Who Hate Editing

Note! I am giving away signed copies of my new omnibus on my blog starting tomorrow (Wed, February 8!). Check back for a chance to win!

Since I wrote my posts on how I drastically upped my word count and plotted my novels, a lot of people have been asking
me to do a post on editing. I can totally understand why, editing can
be very intimidating. I actually used to dread edit time because that
was when I actually had to deal with all the problems I'd been
putting off while writing, not to mention that by the time I'd read
through my book the requisite 5 times it took me to finish an edit to
my satisfaction, I invariably hated it.

But after 8 finished books, I've come
around to a different way of thinking. These days, editing is
probably my favorite part of the writing process. This is partially
because all the planning I do means I have far fewer horrifying messes
to deal with in the editing phase of things (yet another benefit to
planning your novel), but mostly it's because I started thinking
about editing in a whole new light. A new light that I'm not going
to attempt to explain in the hopes that others can learn from the
years I spent banging my head against things.

So, without further ado, here is my
take on the editing process, complete with the tools I build for each
book. I can't promise it will work for you exactly as written, every author's
brain works differently, after all. But I do hope it will at least
encourage you to approach edits with a new frame of mind.

Disclaimer: Unlike my work count
tips, which I think can work for anyone, this process is highly
personal. If something I describe doesn't work for you, feel free to
ignore it or replace it with something you find more useful. I offer
these only as examples of methods I use to save time and lower stress during the editing process.

But Rachel, I HATE Editing!

I hear this all
the time in a million different variations. Hell, I used to say this
myself. Now, though, when someone tells me they hate editing, I answer
thus: No, you don't.

Editing is
writing. If you like writing, you like editing. Editing is just the
part of writing that's at the end, meaning the problems you've been
putting off tend to collect there, which earns it a lot of bad press.
However, what most people fail to realize is that editing, like
writing, is a skill. Like writing, it gets better and easier
with practice, methods, and attention. But just as each pie baked makes you a better baker, each house designed makes you a better architect, and each book written makes you a
better writer, so does each editorial process make you a better editor.

I firmly believe
that every good writer can become a good editor if they're not one
already. The same skills that make you a good story teller make you a
good story perfecter, you just have to stop hating the process and
start treating your editing like you treat your writing – something
you strive to be good at, something you do every day, and something
that you want to make a career out of. Because trust me, if you're a
pro writer, you're going to spend a LARGE part of your career
editing. A writer who ignores their editing skill is like a carpenter
who can design and build a table but completely ignores the sanding
and finishing. Sure it's a working table, maybe even a really nice
one, but no one's going to want to sit at it and get splinters in
their elbows. Editing is power, embrace it.

Ok, Ms.
Smarty-Pants, how do I get better at editing?

The most effective
way is to write a lot of books and edit them, though I admit that's
not the most practical solution, especially for people trying to get
their first book ready for sale. Another good way is to edit other
people's work, though it can be hard to bridge the gap between
finding someone else’s problems and solving your own. So, if
you're in a hurry to edit your own work quickly and effectively,
here's how I do it.

Rachel's Editing Process

Step 1:
Changing the way you think about editing.

What
is editing? This is one of those stupid questions I ask, but bear
with me. When you're editing a novel, what are you actually doing?
Sure, you're rewriting the prose to make it prettier and you're
fixing characters and making the plot make sense and so on, but what
are you really
doing? What is the point of all this work? Even getting the novel
ready to go to a publisher is still only a step, not the end goal. So
what is the final destination of editing?

Answer: Reader experience.

When you write a first draft, you are
writing a story. You're telling your character's tale, spinning your
adventure, whatever. When you start to edit a novel, you're no longer
just telling a story, you're getting ready to put on a production, to invite a reader into your world. Think of
your book as a fun house ride. You might have built this funhouse
based on your fantasies, but once you invite people in, it's no long
your world alone. The world has to make sense to others, it has to
delight and surprise and, most importantly, capture them. The readers might be drawn in by the glitz at the front door, but from the moment they set foot inside
your domain, it's your job to keep them there.

This, for me, is what editing is about.
You are no longer just getting words down, you're no longer asking
“what happens next?” You're asking “how can I prepare the
reader for what happens next?” and “how can I make them LOVE
IT?” You're not just crafting a story, you're crafting an
experience that you are going to share with each person who picks up
your book. It is your job to make sure your plot and world make sense
not just within the book, but in the mind of the reader. Your job to
make sure your characters are engrossing, not just effective for your
plot. Your job to give these people a reason to stay.

This is my editing mindset. Every
change I make from here on out is for the reader. I've found thinking
this way can take a lot of the tediousness out of editing. It also
helps me pull back from the story to see its flaws. After all, this
isn't just my story anymore, it's a production I'm putting on for a
world wide audience with my characters doing the acting, my
descriptions forming the scenery, and my plot making the audience gasp.

I hold out my hand to the reader and
say, let me show you something amazing. The reader grabs hold, and off we run down the path into worlds that don't exist. Editing is
perfecting that path. I told you it was awesome.

Step 2: Editing Tools

Overblown rhetoric
aside, let's get down to the nuts and bolts of the business. When I
finish a book, I usually wait one night and then jump straight into editing. Some people like to wait, but I'm impatient and prefer
to strike while my understanding of the book is still fresh. This is
a very personal choice, do whatever feels right for you.

The first thing
I do in any edit is to identify what's wrong with the book. The reasoning behind this is the same I used to up my word
count: knowledge. Just as you write faster when you know what you're
writing about, you solve problems faster when you know what those
problems are. Simple, right?

But identifying
what needs fixing in a story is actually a lot more complicated than
it sounds. Usually, I can pull the first several right off the top of
my head, but there are many other problems that run too deep to see
after only one draft. These are the problems I have to hunt, and for
that, I use three tools – a scene map, a time line, and a To Do
list.

The Scene Map:
If you've read my post about how I plot novels, you already know what
this is. A scene map is just a very quick jot down of what happens in
the book broken up by chapter. As an example, here's an entry from the scene map for
the first chapter of the book I just finished editing:

Ch
1 (7452)

D
gets Caldswell tip from Anthony

D
goes to star port, checks the tip, sees the Fool

D
has her interview, impressive, gets the job

Basil
takes D on the tour, we see R, job is laid out

Very simple, very
short hand. You're not writing a synopsis here. The point of the
scene map is to be a guide, literally a map to what happens in your
book. Why do I do this? Well, when I finish a novel, there may be scenes
back at the beginning I haven't looked at in months. A scene list
helps me refresh my memory for what I actually wrote while at
the same time helping me see the big picture.

Also, with a scene map,
identifying plot lines becomes very easy. I often print my map out and
highlight the scenes in different color markers to denote what plot
lines they touch – love story scenes, main plot scenes, secondary
plot scenes, etc. This lets me see visually how my book is put
together. That may not sound like your thing, but I highly suggest
you try it at least once. I think you'll be surprised by how useful it can be.

Finally, a scene
map lets me easily jump around my book, a benefit that will
become apparent shortly.

(Silly but Useful
Tip: Notice how marked the chapter's word count at the top? I do this to make
sure all my chapters are roughly the same length. Since I have
Scrivener which already lays this info out for me on the manuscript
page, I don't really need to do this, but if you're not using
Scrivener I totally recommend marking your chapter word counts somewhere so you can spot any anomalies. If
you have one 4k chapter and one 8k chapter right next to each other, for example,
the 8k will feel like it's dragging no matter how good the tension
is. Always good to keep an eye on these things.)

The Time Line:
This is just what it sounds like. After I jot down my scene list, I
make a time line of all the relevant events that happen in the novel
(plus before and after, if needed). Once I've got those down, I go
back again and add in what all my characters were doing at those
times, especially those characters who are doing things “off
screen”.

I usually draw my time lines out in my notebook, and I never draw them to scale. This
timeline is less about showing the relative distance between events
and more about keeping track of what happens when, who's together
when, and where everyone is when important events occur (and, thus,
how much these absent people could be expected to know about said
important event at what times). So really it's more like a time and space line, but
you get the idea.

Why waste effort on
a time line now, especially if you already made one during the planning
stage (which you can totally update and use, by the way)? Well,
making a time line forces you to think about where everyone actually
is, what they're doing, and why. Just the act of thinking about this
will often reveal problems in your book that you never even noticed.

If a scene map is
a map to your book, a time line is a fault finding device for your
plot. It can also help point out places where the action is too loose
or too tight, identify where tension might be lagging, and show when
a character's been out of the picture for too long (my villains
especially seem to spend a lot of time sitting around. This is bad,
characters with enough motivation to be antagonists do not sit on
their hands).

It doesn't have to
be the best drawn time line in the world, but remember that even
though you're the only one who will be looking at it, do you really
want to use a crappy tool? Of course not. Take the time to do it
right and you'll find your time line has all kinds of unexpected uses.

The To Do List: So
now that you've built your scene map and your time line, it's time to
start putting your novel through the wringer to squish out the
problems. Every problem I find, I put on a To Do list. I use a sheet
of notebook paper for this, but you can use anything you want. The
important part is to make sure the list is somewhere you can easily
access it, because you're going to be adding to it a lot.

Once
I've written out every problem I can think up or hunt down, I organize them
by level of trouble they'll be to fix, starting with the largest and
most complicated and ending with the smallest. See, editing
is like cleaning a house. You know how you don't vacuum before you
dust because then the dust will get all over your nicely
vacuumed floor? Editing is the same. Solving problems is a messy
business, and you don't want that mess getting all over scenes you've
already edited. So rather than work linearly through a book from
beginning to end, I work on each problem separately starting with the
biggest and working my way down. More on this in the next section.

Step 3: Actually Editing

Making my tools
and my To Do list usually takes me about a day. Once those are done
and I have my list, though, it's time to get to work.

Fixing the big stuff

As I mentioned up
in the To Do list, I do the bulk of my editing from biggest problem
to smallest, not from first page to last. I do this because I don't
want to make more work for myself by messing up already edited
scenes. But while I think this is the smartest and most efficient way
to work, I can completely understand why other writers might not want
to edit things this way. Jumping to the middle of a scene can feel
really disconnecting.

However, if you're
working on getting better at editing and you haven't tried doing
things this way yet, I do suggest you give it a go. The beginning of
your book might feel like a natural starting place for your edit, but
when you start at page one, its very easy to get distracted. Since
you're following the story rather than your list, you'll be hitting
the problems all in a jumble, and it can very quickly get
overwhelming.

Going from problem
to problem rather than from start to finish lets you focus on one
thing at a time, thus letting you keep control, which is vital to a
good edit. When I'm editing, I try to keep my focus pin point. I
solve one problem at a time, and if I encounter new problems while
I'm working, I add them to my To Do list and keep going. That is why
I have a To Do list, it remembers to fix problems so I don't have to
get distracted.

If you've written
your novel well, your story will constantly be tugging you in directions other than the way you're going. As well it should, you wrote it be engrossing, after all.
But the edit is not the time to get caught up in things. I use my scene list
like an anchor to pull me through my To Do list, jumping from scene to
scene until all the major items, the ones I started
with and the ones I added, are crossed out. When I'm down to the
dregs of nit picky pervasive problems (things like misspelled names
or mismatched eye colors), it's time to move on to the read through.

The read through

By the time I've
finished my To Do list, I've usually visited every scene in my novel
at least once in the course of chasing down problems. Also, my
novel is usually a MESS. The read through is where I clean things up.
Now I start on page one and I start reading, cleaning things up as I
go. I also keep an eye out for consistency issues, things I missed in
my bigger edits, and of course, reader experience. The read through
is where I try to really finesse the book. This is the part where I pour over
sentences, bring out my hooks, and obsess over end of chapter cliff
hangers. Fortunately, since I've already addressed all my big
problems, I am free to do this without worry. The hard part is over and I'm clear to sweat the small stuff. It's a very liberating
feeling.

Generally
speaking, by the time I reach the end of my read through, I've found
a few more items for my To Do list. If these items are small, I address them during the read through, but I try to save the big stuff for the
end. Once the read through is done, I go back and fix everything that
still needs fixing until my To Do list is now completely scratched
out. At this point, my novel is officially edited, but there's still
one thing left to do.

Activating the Reader Brain

My book is now
about as good as I can make it. Oh sure, there are still things I can
tweak (there are ALWAYS things I can tweak), but generally speaking
I'm pretty happy with the whole affair. However, I don't send the
manuscript off yet. First, I need to make sure I'm not deluding myself about the book being good. It's time for the final test, to read my book as a reader
instead of a writer.

This is kind of a
hard thing to pull off. After all, I've spent months with the story
by now. The key is to find a way to trick your brain. I do this by
putting my book on my Kindle. Since I do almost all my pleasure
reading on my Kindle, this lets me disconnect from the part where I'm
reading my book and actually get into the story for what it is.
Also, since I can't edit the text at all while it's on the Kindle,
it's easy to just relax and enjoy the story. Of course, I keep a notebook handy
in case I do find things, but mostly I just read. Let me tell you,
there is no better feeling than reading something you wrote and
thinking “wow, this is actually pretty good!”

And that's a wrap!

If I can get
through this point without any huge red flags popping up, the edit is
officially done. Now, it's time to send the novel on to its next
stage of existence. For me, this means sending it to my agent. For
other people, it means sending it off to beta readers.

(You'll notice how
I didn't mention beta readers before this, right? Well, that's
because I don't believe in beta readers of any sort before I've
edited my book at least once. First off, I think its rude to ask
someone to read something as unfinished as a first draft, and second,
if I rely on others to spot my problems for me, then I'm not growing
as an editor or a writer. Finally, I think its a waste of an editor, both professional and beta readers alike, to have them catching the sort of
huge, obvious problems found in a first draft. Save the fresh,
foreign eyeballs for the problems you can't find yourself, anything
else is a waste of everyone's time.)

The Wheel of Edits turns...

Of course, no
matter how carefully I edit a book, it will still come back from my
agent full of notes. Same for when it comes back from my editor. This
is as it should be. If I could catch everything myself, we wouldn't
need editors. Every time notes come back, I do my editorial process over again.
I update my scene map and time line if needed, make a To Do list, organize the problems, etc. My books usually go through three rounds of edits before
they enter official production – my initial edit, my agent's
notes, and my editor's notes. I can't speak for other authors, but I
think this is pretty typical.

A note for the first time novelist

With all the
pressure on first time novelists to turn in a picture perfect draft
these days, it can be tempting to edit your book over and over in a
quest for perfection. Once I met a writer who'd edited her first
novel thirty times! Not that I don't understand the impulse. After all, there
are still things in the Spirit Thief I wish I could go back and
change. However, there is such a thing as editing too much.

Every edit you do has diminishing returns. After a point,
you're just moving words around and wasting your time. Sooner or
later, you have to say goodbye and turn that sucker in. So if you don't have a publishing deadline yet, set one
for yourself. Don't let your editing become an endless process.
You've got a lot of books to write, after all. Don't let any one
novel monopolize your time and keep you from writing all that you can
write.

Step 4: Tips to a Happy, Low Stress,
Successful Edit

Every edit is as
different as the book it's trying to fix. Some novels come out almost
perfect, others are enormous messes. Planning at the beginning helps,
but it's impossible to anticipate everything. No matter how prepared
you are, there is no avoiding an edit, which means there's no
avoiding the problems, and frustrations, an edit brings. That said,
here are a few general tips I've found that help 99% of the time.

#1 - Don't be too hard on yourself

I said at the very
beginning that editing is a skill, and I've found that I'm a lot
happier if I treat it as such. Editing is hard, especially if you
haven't done it a lot yet. You wouldn't get mad at someone who
couldn't play the piano perfectly after their very first lesson, so
don't hate on yourself if your first edit goes less than smoothly.
Don't get frustrated when you don't know how to solve a problem.
Instead, step back and think of things in the bigger picture.

Most importantly,
edit daily. Just like you write every day during the first draft,
edit every day during the editing process. If you get stuck, move on
to another problem, but always remember that you are practicing a
skill, and unless you're a savant, you're not going to be
great at it to start with. Have patience with yourself and your
book. Don't give up. You learned enough about writing to get to The
End, you can learn enough about editing to get your manuscript ready
for publication.

#2 - Trust your instincts

If you care enough
about stories to want to write them, you probably have good story
telling instincts. You can't explain it, but you like some scenes better than others. Conversely, you might hate a
scene and not know why. With the lack of any easily identifiable
problem, it can be tempting to just ignore the nagging feeling and
move on. Don't. You got your story instincts over years of exposure
to the best stories our world can deliver, books and movies and plays
that have survived not only commercial production, but also the test
of time. Trust your instincts. If you dislike a scene, that means
something is wrong. Go back and figure out what it is. Never put a
scene you don't love in your book.

#3 – No problem is unfixable

There is no slog
like a bad edit, and when you're first learning how to fix a book, there's no
avoiding a bad time. I have never, ever been as depressed about
writing as I got during the edits for The Spirit Rebellion. I'm
generally a pretty happy person, but there were days I just didn't
want to get out of bed because I couldn't stand to deal with stupid,
unfixable problems any longer.

But no problem is truly unfixable. When you're writing a book, you are god. You can change
anything, which means there is no corner you can paint yourself into
that you can not get out of. True, finding a solution that works
might be difficult, and you might not get the right solution on the first try, but it will come. You might need to cut off someone's arm to
get there, but you will always reach The End if you are willing to
open your mind, embrace your limited divinity, and think beyond the
plot.

And that, in a
very large nutshell, is how I edit.

Again, these are
just my opinions on the subject. Every author operates differently,
but I really hope you found something in all this that will help you
with your own editorial process. Thank you for reading, and if you
have comments about this post or suggestions for things you've
found helpful, please leave them below. I love hearing how other
authors work.

Every time you post about your writing process and techniques I learn so much! Our brains work the same way, and as an inexperienced writer, hearing from my experienced-writer-brain-twin what works couldn't be more helpful. Thank you so, so much for sharing!!

This is very, very helpful. I'm stuck in an edit that feels like an awful slog. I'm trying to make my book a little younger - more squarely MG than YA, so I've got to deal with the language and plot issues and I'm so overwhelmed I usually just end up checking Facebook a million times instead. I'm going to make a timeline and scene chart tomorrow and get started anew!

A friend sent me a link to the "How I went from" article, and that was very helpful, but this was even more of what I needed. I'm happy to say I finished my first draft of my first novel in November, but since then I have been stuck with the overwhelmingforeverdoomingness of the rewrite/edit process. I know how to write, but I have discovered I don't know how to do this part, and it makes my teeth hurt every time I sit down to start again.

But your article has raised a torch high in the darkness, and given me a point to aim for. Thanks, I am really grateful.

I know I'm weird because I love editing my work. Slashing unnecessary words, turning a phrase differently, catching the blue eyes that should've been brown...So much fun. However, I do not like reading thru the entire story over and over and over because by then, my editing eyes just slide across the words. I think the Kindle idea is one that will help me with that. Thanks for your informative blog.

Rachel, this is great. Thanx so much. Could you pls clarify a few points tho?1. If I understand correctly, you finish a first draft w/o editing and then when you're done you do the scene map? Meaning you go back and re-read and do the scene map based on the re-read?2. After scene-map you do Timeline right away? No edits based on scene map? And do you do Timeline based on re-read of draft, or based on scene map info? 3. Do you do To DO list right after Timeline? And based on scene map/timeline? Or do you re-read draft again?4. Main gist....do you use the three tools in succession without doing line edits or changes between using the scene map/timeline/To Do...and is each done by a respective reading of the draft? Example: Finish draft. Read draft and do scene map simultaneously. Read draft again and do timeline based on reading. Read draft and do TO DO list based on reading....And only after this process, implement changes and line edits...

@anonymous Sorry it's taken me so long to get back. I don't check the comments on my older posts much. But I am happy to answer your questions!

To clarify:

1) I make the scene map and to do list before I actually read anything. Since I've just finished the book, I know where everything is and all the major problems generally w/out looking. Also, many times I'll have notes I made for myself while writing, things like "fix this to match chapter 2" and what not. I can do this b/c I edit immediately after finishing a draft, but if you like to let the work sit (probably a better idea), a quick readthrough before making your notes (and I mean QUICK, you are not doing a line edit here, think skimming) might be in order.

The most important part to remember about this step is that you are making the tools you'll need for the edit, not actually editing yet. Write, make scene map, edit, that's my process. I never re-read unless I'm ready to edit because I can not stop myself from tinkering, and editing without a plan is a good way to end up editing forever.

2) I make the scene map and the timeline at the same time, or one right after the other. They're both tools, I don't do any actual edits other than tiny, typo type things until I've got both tools in hand.

3) The To Do list is another tool, but unlike the time line and scene map, it grows along with the project. At the beginning, generally right after I've finished making my scene map/timeline, I'll just make a list of everything I know off the top of my head that needs fixing. Then, I pick the problem I want to work on first and stop there. This is the beginning of the real edit. But it's important to remember you'll find other things to add to your To Do list as you go, problems you forgot about or just noticed, that kind of thing.

I've found that my To Do list grows terrifyingly long as soon as I start seriously working on the first couple of major problems, but it slows down as you go. I consider my edit finished when every item is crossed off my To Do list.

4) I think you're missing the point of doing things this way a bit. My process is designed so that I re-read as few times as possible. So, to that end, I make my tools and to do list without re-reading just based off my memory of the book and basic fact checking (if I forget the order of events). Once I've got my tools and To Do list, I start at item one of the To Do list and, using my tools as a guide to help me navigate the book, I jump in and start fixing things.

This often means I start editing at the middle or end of the book and jump around even more from there. I don't actually re-read my book from the beginning until every item on the To Do list is crossed off and I'm ready to smooth things out. The reason I do this is because the more I re-read my books, the more familiar I become. Familiarity breeds contempt and all that, so I want to avoid this as much as possible while still addressing all the problems.

Line editing is the very last step. Editing for me goes from biggest problems to smallest, then back through to smooth everything over. Again, this is only my process. Everyone works differently, so feel free to cherry pick my system to make it work for you.

As others have said, this post was really helpful. I'm sitting here with my manuscript in front of me, chock-full of notes from my editor (they're very helpful, but they're also very plentiful). Sometimes I want to scream. But you've helped me put this in perspective. I love the idea of thinking of it as creating an experience for your reader, and not as a chore. Thank you so much!

Rachel this has been fantastic advice. I enjoyed your blog about 2,000 to 10,000 words and now my eyes are opened just a little more to one of the harder aspects I have of writing "editing." Thank you for sharing your knowledge.

You have no idea how much your blog has helped me over the course of this last year... I went from scratch to my first draft of book one and two in just twelve months ... and editing was something long overdue!! I just did a Read Through and corrections on the first... but I haven't though about it in this way before(I actually just found this post heh... while procrastinating on my "editing time")

I have definitely found that putting work onto my e-reader helps; I call it "reader mode" and it does give you a whole different perspective on the novel. I'm glad to see someone with more audience recommending this as I think it's such a simple but effective tip!

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I actually also kind of enjoy editing. I sometimes use the approach to writing, where you have the whole picture figured out first - the storyline, the character arcs - and then, after that, you deal with details. It is like in drawing or painting - you start with the general outlines and only after that - you work on the details, keeping the whole picture in mind. That is why the "editing" part can take more time than the writing itself, and of course, I edit my texts at least twice. Sometimes it can be a good idea to let someone else look it through, in order to catch small mistakes and deal with wordiness. Or even to get a wordiness checker and do it there.

2k to 10k

If you like my writing posts, you'll love my book!

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Kick-Ass Science Fiction

The Book That Started It All

Who are you again?

My name is Rachel Aaron/Rachel Bach, and I write the books you see over there on the left. I also play video games, watch anime, read manga, and read a TON of books. I love great sword fights, witty dialog, and charming rogues (except for the ones who stunlock me).